Is this Nigeria or Ethiopia?

There’s no photo for today’s post because I couldn’t bring myself to snap the near-dead baby. Yesterday a mother brought her eleven month old baby into the emergency room at Faith Alive. The baby girl was wasting away, severely malnourished. Her eyes were rolling back, she was listless, and moaning ever so quietly. Doctor Chris called me into the room and said “See, this is what we deal with. This mother doesn’t have money to take the baby to the hospital. We will sponsor this child.” Within a few minutes, a nurse went to the finance department to get some money, the doctor wrote a letter to an inpatient hospital asking for the girl to be seen immediately, and a driver was summoned. The mother, baby, nurse, and I packed into a little car and drove to JUTH (Jos University Teaching Hospital). I prayed that the baby would survive until we got there. Traffic slowed us, and I had a heightened sense of the extreme poverty around us. Adult and children beggars sat in the street, afflicted with dysfunctional bodies caused by polio. This must be a taste of hell, I thought. This is not the side of Nigeria that I love.

We pulled into the pediatric unit at JUTH and our nurse gave the letter to an admissions person. She took one look at the baby and said angrily “This isn’t an emergency. Why do you insist this is an emergency? Ay, this baby has been here before and we need to see her hand-card.” Each patient in Nigeria needs to have their hand-card with their patient number at that hospital. We packed back into the car and drove 15 minutes to retrieve it at her house, and this time I prayed “Lord, please take this child.” My hopes were dashed because while we were at JUTH I saw another mother with her baby. That baby looked like a National Geographic photo taken during an Ethiopian famine. His or her head was big but the limbs were as thin as twigs. Lord help us.

We did return to JUTH with the hand-card, and fortunately they saw the baby girl we’d brought. Our nurse said the mom had her baby’s adenoids removed about 9 months ago, and not by a doctor. She must’ve gotten an infection (was it HIV?) and had just failed to thrive. Our nurse gave the mom 3,000 Naira (about $20) and her cell phone number, and plans to follow up. There wasn’t anything more for us to do.